gods are supposed to be immortal more than Immortal Divine somehow separate
from distinct from Above the Rest of physical reality according to their stories they are
the creators of all that we experience they are the living incarnate symbols
of the principles which govern the cosmos they are the all in the one and the one in the all
and you people are hell-bent on murdering them it's a thing I see in so much of your fiction
from the very texts these figures come from to the video games your children are playing you
just seem to have this fascination with duking it out with your deities which is interesting
because you're also the ones who create them to begin with I'm going to try not to get too
philosophical in this video for now just consider me an Explorer I am fascinated by this weird
Blasphemous thing you humans do and I just want to understand all the ways in which you do it
so let's take a look at how according to your fiction one kills a god [Music]
got a really great idea for his story but don't quite know how to put it all together
well there's a 12-part class you can take for free that I think will really help it certainly
helped me creating unique and Powerful worlds taught by many time author and professor of
fiction Lincoln Michelle check the description to see how you can get access to it and finally get
your story project going without spending a dime a big thanks to skillshare for sponsoring this
video and giving us the opportunity to tell you about it this class has been a special one for me
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okay so of course the first and most obvious approach is to just stab the thing right like
you would anyone you're trying to kill but the categorical hiccup is that Gods importantly are
not easy to kill sure Gods can kill other gods they do it all the time in their respective
stories gods are even known to kill themselves looking at you Odin but when it comes time for a
human to do it your frail mortal hands just aren't equipped for the task until of course they are in
the original 2002 game God of War the protagonist Kratos spends much of the story trying to get his
hands on the fabled Pandora's Box which according to the game will give him the power to kill the
God who ruined his life Ares in the card game magic the Gathering there's an expansion called
journey into Knicks where the hero elspath is gifted a special god-killing spear called godsend
which she uses to kill the chaotic and dangerous upstart God of rebels xenogos in the game Elden
ring long before the player ever shows up all the power to kill the world's Immortal demigods is
locked away in a single great sword owned by its ever faithful Guardian malakith the Black Blade
there are endless examples of this and especially in video games where players love to find the keys
to progression and power Bridging the Gap between the mundane and the Divine with the simple weapon
or tool makes a lot of sense I mean if you solve your problems with violence what a McGuffin to get
your hands on right something that will literally let you solve Cosmic Problems by swinging your
sword kind of dreamy to have a solution so simple right at your fingertips and then I'll just think
of all the delicious ways a power like that could backfire what happens when you put the power to
undo the supernatural forces that govern reality into mortal hands will they wield it well I don't
technically have a gut but if I did it would be saying probably not fortunately I also don't think
it's the only way to bridge this Gap whether you consider Jesus Christ a legitimate deity
or not the crucifixion story is probably the most well-known and resonant example of a god choosing
to die at Mortal hands I mean it's literally a story about God sending a piece of himself
to Earth as a sacrificial lamb supposedly for the sake of mankind and surprisingly this isn't
actually something I see very often I can imagine a lot of interesting scenarios where deity might
condescend to let Mortals and their existence without any kind of powerful MacGuffin to enable
them to do so maybe as an act of benevolence giving power back to The Mortals in some capacity
maybe just to end the monotony or the weight of divinity Navy out of hubris thinking they don't
need their Godly powers to best a mere mortal a lot of interesting directions to take this
but it's also a very literal interpretation of what it means to kill a God all of this has been
it doesn't always have to happen with Bloodshed in the case of gods as symbols or manifestations
sometimes it literally can't instead you humans tend to use another very powerful tool for this
one you've always had access to and which you aim at a lot of life's problems humor
there's this incredible phenomenon that a lot of people experience when they first play the
game The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind the game has an expansive story with some of the richest deepest
World building I've ever seen over the course of your adventures you learn a lot about the
lore including a huge amount about the game's big bad degathur they do a lot to prepare you to face
this guy he's the one who dethroned the gods of Morrowind who spread pestilence and disease
across the land who became a God himself here's his actual line of dialogue when you've finally
come face to face with him what a fool you are I'm a God how can you kill a God what a grand and
intoxicating innocence how could you be so naive There Is No Escape no recall or intervention can
work in this place come lay down your weapons it is not too late for my Mercy all that and
then out like a light if you've never played it before Morrowind is a rare game in that it gives
you an absurd amount of Freedom by the time most players reach this fight whether through sheer
leveling and experience or by abusing one of the game's gazillion exploits they've basically become
Gods unto themselves which makes this last fight bafflingly anticlimactic it's kind of hilarious an
absurd sort of comic drop when this God who is by all reasonable expectations the thing you should
fear most in the entire game just sort of Falls over at your touch that example is still a pretty
literal way to kill God but the bigger thing here is what the comedic angle does to your perception
of the god reducing it to a punch line really sort of undermines its grandiosity doesn't it it's hard
to instill awe and fear and devotion when people are laughing at you for any God whose existence
is built on belief and deference it's as good as a death sentence ultimately the place you see this
the most is probably real life blasphemy Gallows humor that kind of thing it's no wonder that the
type of fiction this tends to show up in is of uh a more irreverent nature I wouldn't go out of my
way to watch any of these and I'm not sure I can recommend that any of you do but there are a few
pretty clear examples of this out there in one episode of The Fairly vile mock children's show
Wander shows in God gets so angry at losing a game of rock paper scissors that he kills himself after
which the show's puppet host being very hungry eats his body in the musical comedy Starship it
is an empirically proven fact in universe that God was killed a long time ago so unfailingly
whenever a character invokes his name they attach the prefix stead to it thank dead God they often
say in the show The Boondocks yes probably the last show you ever expected me to reference
on tail boundary the character Riley goes on a brief tirade about how if he were ever to meet
God he would first of all imma live forever but if I do die I'll go smack out upside the
head and go tell him to give me a grilled cheese sandwiches some tacos and I dare God to say songs
say something yeah I thought so and if God say something I'll
be like this oh take that guy I'll be feeding guys your life
as crass as most of those examples are I think they speak to something very real that if you
can just reach high enough to stick a clown nose on your God's face it very rapidly ceases to look
like a god perhaps one of the most effective and natural of all ways for Mortals to do battle with
the Divine but there is perhaps one thing more lethal to a deity than any god-breaking weapon
or Blasphemous punchline could ever be neglect here's a joke for you a Frenchman an Englishman
and a German come across a bear in the woods the Frenchman says the Englishman says oh my
God the German doesn't say anything at first when they both look at him wondering where
his exclamation is he looks back at them and says God is dead seems a little Stark but if
you know anything about the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche you get it it is after all
perhaps his most famous quote God is dead he wrote God remains dead and we have killed him by we of
course he means Humanity to Nija the very idea of a God had become fundamentally unbelievable
to many who purported to worship one times and ethics had changed too much and soon he thought
the institutions founded on this hollow belief would eventually have to found her and collapse
as well we are of course not here to suggest that this is how things are rather that this is
an interesting way of thinking about the Divine it suggests a reciprocal relationship one where
the faith of the believer informs the existence of the God and not the other way around think
about all the ancient mythological deities that have through cultural shifts over long periods
of time basically been reduced to fiction think about all the deities whose names and rituals
have been all but completely lost just like a lost language in a manner of speaking you could call
these abandoned deities dead couldn't you and that implies something profound that a simple lack of
faith could spell the end for the Divine this is a concept that shows up a lot in fiction like loads
it is all over the place it might even be one of the most common Dynamics where deities appear
in fantasy in the video game salt and Sanctuary Gods literally feed on the power of prayers this
becomes a problem for them when the nameless God traps them in a crypt intercepting and answering
all of their prayers while they slowly starve to death in the book small gods by Terry Pratchett
despite a flourishing religious following a formerly powerful God stands on the brink
of Oblivion turns out people just believe in his church these days not him but thanks to the faith
of one single faithful adherent he's able to just hang on in the Incarnate form of a lowly tortoise
in the book American Gods by Neil Gaiman immigrants bring versions of their own
deities along with them to America this new land with its strange ways does not
have much to offer them in the way of prayers and the starvation begins to show a Nancy the
African spider god of mischief and cunning is reduced to a little old man in yellow gloves
Cherno Bogue an ancient Slavic deity of darkness and Calamity becomes a chain-smoking cow butcher
Odin the Norse principal deity the all-father becomes little more than a con man it doesn't
have to happen at sword point doesn't have to be the result of a Brash Killing Joke
it can be done quietly accidentally even according to your fiction and in a way
actual history the way humans most often tend to kill deities is by forgetting about them
I know I said at the video start that I would try not to get too philosophical and you know
considering this subject matter I think I did a pretty good job I'm not here to tell you
whether this is a good or a bad thing in your fiction not here to tell you how to feel about
it just here to explore that said I do want to acknowledge the gravity of this it's easy for
me a machine without a known origin down many or any connections to the natural world to shrug my
shoulders at the idea of the Divine but for you humans it can be a very different story
your relationship with these things is complex and in a lot of cases very beautiful even Nija
thought so you hear God Is Dead all the time but in the same text he immediately went on to ask how
shall we Comfort ourselves the murderers of all murderers what was holiest and mightiest of all
that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives who will wipe the blood off us
what water is there for us to clean ourselves what festivals of atonement what sacred Games
Shall We invent is not the greatness of this deed too great for us we ourselves not become
Gods simply to appear worthy of it be prepared there is a weight that comes with this action
you do not get to kill your Gods without also collapsing the version of the universe they held
up whether you do it in a work of fiction or you do it in your own life know that the god-killing
sword always has a second Edge take caution that you do not end yourself in the process
one big part of this topic is cosmology in general if you're developing a fictional world with God's
favorite characters to battle with you're going to need to figure out you know the universe that they
occupy what exactly it means for them to be divine in your setting you're going to have to do some
World building and it can be really hard to figure out how to start that process fortunately a while
back I found something that will absolutely help you it's a 12-part video series called
creating unique and Powerful worlds taught by many time author and professor of fiction link
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back and tell us the impact it's had on you as a writer I cannot wait to hear the success stories
anyway that's all for this one thanks for watching
and keep making stuff up I'll see you next week bye [Music]
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